A high rate of economic growth in Belarus – an average of about 8% annually from 2001 to 2011 – has helped reduce poverty almost seven-fold. A favorable external environment supported the economic growth in Belarus.
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This brief focuses on gender in Belarus.
The World Bank Group is committed to including a gender lens
in its activities and addressing gender-specific challenges
to... Show More + reduce inequalities between women and men. Europe and
Central Asia's Gender at a Glance series is a new
collection of data summaries that seek to present a more
nuanced view of the heterogeneous gender situation in each
of the region's 30 countries. The main objective of the
briefs is to provide a quick reference guide for interested
users and to increase the visibility of gender-relevant data
in the region. The briefs offer basic data on gender
indicators and key outcomes for each country alongside
regional, sub-regional, and income-level comparative
benchmarks. Each brief tells a story about the relationship
between gender and national outcomes in endowments
(education, health, and demographics), access to economic
opportunity, and agency. Show Less -

The development of the institutional
capacity to create and evaluate economic policies remains a
critical need-and constraint-in most transition economies if
they are... Show More + to complete the successful passage to fully
functioning market economies. To take an active role in the
transition process, economic policymakers, business leaders,
government officials, and others need a thorough grounding
in market-based economics. This requires strengthening
economics education and providing support for qualified
economists to teach economics at all levels and to carry out
high-quality research and policy analysis. Although the
education systems in a handful of countries have already
risen to the challenge, in many other transition countries,
the structure of educational and research institutes remains
grounded in the Communist model. This paper presents
findings from a comprehensive study assessing the state of
economics education and research in 24 countries in
East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. While 20
countries were initially included because preliminary
assessments showed that they lacked the capability to offer
high-quality economics education, four additional
countries-the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and
Ukraine-were included to highlight five centers of
excellence that they already host. Based on the experience
of these successful centers, the studys findings, and
information gathered from a series of donor meetings in
Berlin, New York, and Washington, D.C., this paper presents
an approach to building new indigenous capacity for teaching
and research on market-based economics in regions where the
need is particularly critical-the Caucasus, Central Asia,
and Southeast Europe. Show Less -

The author uses an input-output (I-O)
approach to derive internationally comparable estimates of
GNP for the 15 economies of the Former Soviet Union (FSU).
The commonly... Show More + accepted measure of economic output of GDP or
GNP based on the System of National Accounts (SNA) cannot be
readily estimated for these economies because relevant
statistical reporting systems have yet to be set up to
replace the system used historically - the Material Product
System (MPS). The authors three-tier approach improves on
the short-cut method of bridge tables (from MPS to SNA) by
integrating additional financial data and using the inherent
cross-checks of I-O tables. The three steps in the process
are to: (1) analyze the official 20-sector MPS-type I-O
tables; (2) integrate financial data on services, etc., from
National Economic Balance (NEB) tables; and (3) convert the
I-O table derived from the integrated NEB tables to SNA
forms. The author resolves inconsistencies between
Goskomstat I-O tables for the overall FSU accounts and those
for the 15 individual FSU economies by drawing on data from
other financial tables. The main adjustments are in
inter-republic trade, which is included in individual FSU
economies I-Os, but not in the overall I-O for the FSU, and
for unplanned sectors (military, police, and so on).
Additional adjustments necessary to estimate GNP from net
material product - such as inclusion of nonmaterial services
- are explicitly shown in the appropriate I-O sectors.
Appendices report details on these and other adjustments,
notably the apportionment and reevaluation of inter-republic
trade from internal to foreign trade prices. The end product
is one in which income, output, and expenditures are
estimated in a consistent SNA-type framework for the overall
FSU and for the 15 individual FSU economies. These I-O
tables provide the information needed for macroeconomic and
sectoral analysis, and form the basis for estimating per
capita GNP for these economies. The author presents the
three-tier I-O tables for the FSU region as a whole in this
paper, but presents only the SNA tier for individual economies. Show Less -